This week’s poll chose Sleep, Dance Exposure Hours, and Injury Risk in Collegiate Dancers as the Journal Club article of the week! This paper by Fauntroy et al. studies if there’s a connection between a collegiate dancer’s sleep patterns, the number of hours they dance per day, and their risk of experiencing an injury.
72 dance majors on the BFA track at George Mason University reported how many hours they were dancing per day within the university program and filled out the Athlete Sleep Behavior Questionnaire over a seven-month time frame. The study began in August 2019 and concluded in February 2020, capturing information from the entire fall semester and a portion of the spring semester. The dance department at George Mason University is very fortunate to have an Athletic Trainer (AT) on staff to care for the dancers, who also documented injuries within the dance department during the study. The injuries were only counted in the research if the dancer sought medical attention from the AT or a physician. After the researchers collected their data, they completed a statistical analysis to find correlations.
Results
On average, dance students exhibited poor sleep behaviors (no surprise there). Of the 72 dancers, 14 sustained injuries (19.4%). The dancers averaged ~20 hours of weekly dance exposure through technique classes, rehearsals, and performances. This number did not include any dance hours outside of the BFA program, which may not capture the full exposure for those working as dance instructors on the side.
To my surprise, the researchers did not find a consistent correlation between sleep, dance exposure hours, and risk of injury overall — except during the performance month when the dancers’ sleep scores decreased and dance exposure hours increased in November due to their fall dance concert. Poor sleep did not seem to affect the dancers’ risk of injury.
Thoughts
I enjoyed reading this article but was surprised the results weren’t more conclusive. Maybe that stems from my own biases, thinking sleep plays a larger role in reducing risk of injury. However, one of the limitations of the study was that the Athlete Sleep Behavior Questionnaire was only administered once a month, instead of daily or weekly. The authors did this in order to improve survey compliance. I wonder if the results would be different if the dancers completed the survey more regularly — the authors seem to think this as well since they call out the survey frequency as a limitation of their research.
I am also curious if the results would be different if the study were repeated at a dance program that does not have an AT on staff. Many dance-related injuries are due to overuse, and a large benefit of having an AT is addressing those aches and pains before they become chronic. Part of the AT program (according to their website) at George Mason University includes injury prevention training and education, which I imagine creates a dance training environment with fewer injuries each semester.
Speaking from my experience as a dancer and a physical therapist, many dancers are hesitant to seek medical attention out of concerns of being advised to “stop dancing”, and thus never get a diagnosis or establish a solid routine to properly rehabilitate their bodies. If there is hesitancy in seeking care, it may result in the number of reported dance injuries being lower than the reported number of injured dancers. I am also curious how different the results would be if researchers did not count injury diagnoses but instead counted the hours of dance exposure a dancer may have rested or sat out from due to pain. Even though pain does not always mean injury, a correlation between dance-related pain, sleep behavior, and dance exposure hours would be interesting to learn about.
Additional contextual factors I would be curious about are if any of the dancers are double majors, involved with organizations, or are working while attending school. Each of these factors may play a role in sleep behaviors and stress levels. In all, my collegiate dancing pals, try to get some sleep and find a dance medicine specialist if you are experiencing pain or an injury.
Discussion
- What are your thoughts on the study?
- Were these the results you were anticipating, or were you surprised like I was?